The Endless Sands: An Overview of the Great Southern Desert:
Grand Bazaar: As close to a capital as the Endless Sands have, the Grand Bazaar is the hub of all activity in the desert, the countless villagers and bandits that call the lands home bound to ancient rules that dictate a complete cessation of hostilities inside the city, a promise from both sides which is strictly enforced by the enigmatic ‘Skimmers’. A Bustling hub of trade, commerce, barter, and exchanges of all types ranging from spices, food, material wealth and even slaves, a trade which booms in the anarchic south, the Grand Bazaar, even outside the endless sands, is famous for having ‘all products under the sun’...if you desire exotic goods magical or otherwise, rare slaves, spices or anything else, it can be said to be found in the bazaar. It is traditionally ruled by no one, and policed by the Skimmers, who work to maintain a small semblance of order in the city...but otherwise it, much like the sands it calls home, is a lawless trade city. ' ' The Old Palace: A relic of a bygone era for the Endless sands when the sprawling lands of the south were once verdant and lush with exotic flora and fauna, the Old Palace was the seat of the Sultans, the line of rulers who once ruled the sands like emperors and empresses. However, they were said to have been wiped from the material plane by the sundering, the event which turned the endless sands into a blasted hellscape and brought the sand elves to nigh-extinction, their palace scoured of all life and half-buried by the sands over the decades and centuries since. Eerily silent, the halls of the old palace whisper softly on the winds, otherworldly moans and voices heard within the sprawling complex of hallways that make up the aged structure, most of its girth buried beneath the sands...however, scavengers irregularly make their way inside from the few spires that poke out above the sands, eager to reclaim the unclaimed treasure of the sultans...yet, only a scarce few return. ' ' The Voidblasted Wastes: A notoriously dangerous area of the endless sands, the Voidblasted wastes, or simply ‘the wastes’, as it is affectionately referred to by the locals, was once the site of the homeland of the sand elves, and the fabled world tree which they called home. Now, however...it is a nearly fifty-kilometer radius area of absolute chaos, similar to the shattered lands in nature, where the very fabric of reality no longer exists, the boundaries between the planes blasted away for any to traverse. However, travel is nigh-impossible thanks to the ever-shifting nature of the wastes, the air, ground, and lifeforms inside the affected area constantly folding, shifting, and collapsing in on themselves, objects unmaking themselves in lazy, concentric circles only to reform into new, eldritch shapes that defy reality. Even odder creatures occasionally emerge from the depths of the wastes, creatures which shock the soul and drive the denizens of the material plane to insanity...dragons, aberrations, and even once, a creature known only as ‘The Wendigo’ have emerged from the wastes over the years...and as such, it is avoided entirely. Even scavengers and lowlives avoid it like the plague... a hint into how truly terrifying the place is to them. ' ' Caelora'lenn: Once nothing more than a well-hidden series of caves, Caelora’lenn is now home to the last remnants of the once-mighty desert elves, the tight confines of the caves having long since been hollowed out to create large, sprawling caverns rife with desert life...forming nothing short of an oasis in an otherwise intensely harsh land. The desert elves who live there live in quiet solitude, most content to silently grow old, wither, and die within the confines of their new home, like a flower with neither scent nor beautiful visage. A people now tragic and nigh-lifeless, the desert elves waste away their days in boring silence, the daring few who seek better lives quickly leaving the cave and venturing out into the world, where they might find a better life for themselves or their families. Though the depressingly morbid sand-elves care little for many things, and have no centralized ruler, they all collectively respect and look up to a withered old jerky stick of an elf by the name of Kalkan the Venerable, once a mighty magic caster...now little more than a caretaker for his fallen brethren by ensuring the location of Caelora’lenn stays well hidden. He is more jovial than most, and does his best to keep his dwindling people happy...but despite his efforts, his people are quickly fading into obscurity, and possibly extinction, doomed to wither away and vanish inside their cavern home. ' ' The Saltfort: Perhaps a unique feature of the endless sands, the Saltfort is home to the majority of the country’s bandit and lowlife population, mostly monstrous humanoids and inhumans, who have organized into a large organization and call this mountain-fortress their home from which they stage all their raids, kidnappings, and thefts upon the local villages, who have grown accustomed to such things,and leave them be so long as little to no lives are lost...an expectation which the bandits of the saltfort stick to surprisingly honorably. Trading on occasion with the dwarves of wraithbeard keep, the bandits here are a barbaric lot, capturing villagers and travelers alike for both their bustling slave trade and the more carnivorous habits of their fellows, who enjoy feasting on live prey. A well-defended fort for bandits, it has seen a few focused assaults, most recently by the Impaler prince and his armies in the southern civil war, but remains mostly unbroken...the bandits there having learned the ways to stay out of sight and out of mind. ' ' Sandskimmer Fortress: The home of the enigmatic group known only as the skimmers, a group of well-trained beings that take it upon themselves to uphold a small semblance of order in the chaotic, lawless lands of the desert, Sandskimmer fort lies within the inner lands of the desert. A group which recruits secretly from all walks of life, the skimmers are the closest thing the endless sands have to a force of law, and yet...it would be foolish to expect much of them. They care not for the more petty disputes, and will rarely do altruistic acts and save lives, caring more for the big picture and ensuring the lands of the south do not descend into constant civil war, instead preserving the delicate balance the area has. However, the skimmers have been known to take in travelers and natives who are in need at certain times, and have even assaulted the Saltfort a few times not long after their founding, as if proving their unmatched prowess in combat to the cocky bandits who lived there as they danced over the walls like dancers enshrouded by white, taking most of the fort before being driven off. ' ' Gloomgate keep: The Northernmost structure in the endless sands and the border fortress which lies on the border with Draconia, Gloomgate keep is the stuff of local legend. Said to have never been inhabited at all, having simply ‘sprung’ from the sands one hot day, it eerily stands watch over the northern border, its decaying walls obscured by sand and wind, the structures within untouched by the age they seem to have endured, countless bodies arrayed within as if the structure itself abducted and killed them. As such, most travelers give it a wide, wide berth, as the locals all claim it to be haunted, and that the mere act of laying eyes upon it is enough to provoke its ire. Whatever the reasons, it stands unmovingly at the border, strangely never being buried by the ever-shifting sands... ' ' Brinehaul: The Easternmost of the three coastal cities of the sands, Brinehaul is a lawless city which makes it living off of the sea, hauling up loads of natural pearls by the boatload at nearly all hours of the day. A small, yet moderately dense city on the coast, Brinehaul is a more peaceful city compared to others in the desert, the bandits and natives content to get along most of the time in relaxed peace if it means enjoying a nice vacation. ' ' Brineshale: The Second easternmost coastal city in the sands, Brineshale is a city much like its sister cities, yet, it instead makes its living by means of the massive, cutthroat salvage operations that are always in operation within its walls and out on the ocean blue, the various guilds and unions there competing in cutthroat business and competition to haul up the wrecks of the ships which frequently crash near it...though, whether these crashes are intentional or not, none can say. A city infamous for its abysmally low public security, Brineshale is nearly entirely inhabited by the more humanoid bandits and lawless thugs, who murder, enslave and rape each other in the streets even during daylight if it means getting an edge for their guilds or themselves...and of course, money. However, thanks to the influence of the cutthroat salvage guilds in the city, those who live there have have a certain respect for the few unspoken laws the guilds maintain, giving the otherwise lawless city a small degree of law, as even the Skimmers mostly avoid the city, only maintaining a small outpost within the walls. ' ' Brineshell: The westernmost of the coastal cities in the sands, Brineshell is a similarly crime-addled city, said to be even worse than Brineshale, if that can be believed. Hatefully referred to as the ‘City of Slavers’ by the locals, it is a city inhabited entirely by bandits and lowlives, the large walls that surround the city hiding a bustling slave trade that operates at all hours of the day, shipping them off and unloading them from the slaver ships that make port there, the bandits that call the city home, being mostly of the inhuman variety, unlike Brineshale, owing to their nature, frequently turn their slaves and any who dare venture inside the walls without protection into food, experiments, or countless other twisted purposes...and as such, it is scarcely, if ever, visited by any of the locals, and has been completely abandoned by the Skimmers, meaning it is lawless in the truest sense of the word. ' ' Castle Iapetus: Once the Summer getaway for the Sultans, Castle Iapetus now calls itself home to the Impaler prince and his armies, which have risen to prominence in the infamously brutal civil wars that wrack the desert, the castle that lays on the edge of the forest said to have once enjoyed the protection of the forest elves and their formation of the forest, though it is unknown and rather doubtful if that is still the case. Regardless, the current owner has turned it into a den of his new rule, the pikes that surround the nearby sands carrying corpses, impaled anus to mouth by iron pikes and put on display for all to see, all of them wearing clear evidence of their sins on their burnt, charred corpses for all to see. A keep defined by it’s bloody, infamously cold ruler, Castle Iapetus has been very recently been pressed back into service after a long period of disrepair, and now sees frequent attacks by the mysterious forces the Impaler prince is warring against, the locals and most of the bandits deterred from coming near thanks to the barbaric display of impaled corpses surrounding his domain and the army of loyal mercenaries and villagers swayed by his charismatic words of a united desert.